Jeremy- Unfortunately, I must go out out to Waterloo tomorrow so I wot be able to come to you talk and go to lunch. Next time! Andrew Herman, Ph. D. Associate Professor Department of Communication Studies Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 CANADA 519 884-1970 x3693

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jeremy hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> 02/10/09 10:30 AM >>>

On Feb 10, 2009, at 10:14 AM, Tamara Paradis wrote:

Hi all

I'm working on a graduate project that explores the controversies and understandings of MMO gaming as valid leisure. I'm curious what is it about MMO gaming that results in it being viewed as geeky, strange, "luser- ish", etc. I've been struck by the ways in which MMO gamers themselves, as well as everday non-gaming folks and mass media reportage (outside of financial reports!) seem to accept that MMO gaming is somehow a type of strange and suspect pursuit.

I've long been intrigued with the work of Bruno Latour and others from SST and material culture studies who use an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) approach to studying the world and its phenomenon. I am drawn to the ethos of ANT which flattens the divide between researcher and the researched, and which advocates jettisoning old notions of society and "the social", and the old (artificial?) divides between micro/macro, structure/individual, power/domination etc. in the interests of letting the actions tell the story of the results. I'm equlally drawn but intimidated by the methods built into ANT -- the mapping of actors and connections and associations.

actually ANT is not a method, it is just a way of thinking about methods. The methods usually employed are ethnography, network analysis, discourse analysis, citation analysis, and semiotics, much of the terminology of ANT comes from semiotics.

I'm trying to convince a reluctant adviser that an ANT approach is a valid way of studying my research question.

If you are studying the ways things in networks mould and affect the network, then ANT is a good theory to have under your belt. However, when you start to talk about systems like media and reporting, ANT loses power, it is interested in the singular objects and the systems of objects/subjects, not the system itself. So for instance, you could use ANT to easily discuss how certain elements of the MMO interfaces recruit users and provide translations of various meanings to users. You can't really use it to talk about 'newspapers', you can use it to talk about a story in a newspaper that convinced 3 people to contact 6 other people, and those people were confronted by people who understood the story differently and to describe the relationships between signs, the object(newspaper story) and the various individual to tell a story about how the tensions in the groups developed due to different interpretations of the singular object. Then you could add more to that story....

Given the digital focus and the desire to use ANT as ethos and method, as well as the ways in which ANT approaches study and fieldwork, I'm having a rough go of it. I'm wondering if any of you are using ANT or have used it in the past for qualitiative research purposes (e.g. virtual ethnography; findings reporting; etc.). If you have done so in the past, are in the midst of doing so now or are at least intrigued by the possibilities, I'd be interested in talking with you off-list.

I use ANT as a way to think about objects/subjects and relationships, but I tend not to say ANT, I also tend to argue about ANT a fair amount, so take the above with a grain of salt. most people who work with ANT will tell you that they stopped using it in the 90's and they are definitely working in an age that is past, after, beyond ANT. I tend to recommend reading John Law's recent works on this and Latour's recent works, Reassembling the Social and Politics of Nature, which are all works, I'd argue, of 'after-ANT' .

Thanks.

Tamara Paradis tparadis@connect.carleton.ca tsparadis@gmail.com Carleton University - Sociology & Anthropology Ottawa, ON, Canada _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org

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